


broke open their skulls and ate up their brains in imagination

by Wolvesandwerewolves



Series: I’m With You in Rockland [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bugs and Insects, Delusions, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective Disorder, Temporary Character Death, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolvesandwerewolves/pseuds/Wolvesandwerewolves
Summary: Its hard to tell Vanya life-saving information when it’s so, so loud, with the bugs and voices distracting him, but Klaus is trying.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: I’m With You in Rockland [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865728
Comments: 35
Kudos: 166





	broke open their skulls and ate up their brains in imagination

**Author's Note:**

> sup fam. i tried to upload this last night and just wrote the ending of this chapter on the text box directly on ao3, cause i was like im just gonna finish it and post it right away! then the browser crashed...i lost my artful writing. i was so proud of it, it was so poetic, i was feelin’ myself like, girl, you should get something published real time! then i lost it, almost cried and went to bed 
> 
> so hello...let’s try this again. but smarter this time. sorry if the ending is rushed but at least you know why i guess? does that help?

It’s so loud. 

Klaus’s head is pulsing. Somehow it reminds him of the loud music of the nightclub, how it would vibrate through the floor and travel up his chest. But the cacophony floating in the air above him, circling his head like the white powdery moths that won’t let him sleep—it’s not musical. It’s just loud. 

They won’t _shut up._

His heart is a hammer in his chest. His mouth is dry. He feels jittery, but faint. He can’t catch his breath and he is trying very, very hard to ignore the centipedes and beetles crawling on the floor and up his clothes, tiny needle legs embedding into the fabric. His skin burns like electricity, or like the time he caught steel wool on fire and watched the sparks travel up and out. 

Steel wool. He feels like the building is on fire. It’s so hot. But he doesn’t smell smoke. He smells rot, and decay, feels the cold marble floors of the mausoleum against his burning feet—

“Klaus,” Vanya says, and he can tell she’s talking loud but he can barely hear her. She’s kneeling beside him on the floor, one hand on his back and the other gripping his arm. “Breathe. I’m right here. Breathe.”

Klaus tries to. He has to, because he has to let her know. He gasps, and chokes on it. He spits on the ground and feels sick. His chest hurts.

A tiny spider crawls across his hand. His _Hello_ hand. Klaus shakes it off. He does nothing for the twenties of them creeping on his clothes. There are too many. They’re going to covert him entirely, bury him alive in the hallway of his own apartment—

He needs to get up. It’s so hard. Klaus thinks he’s crying, but his face feels too much like cotton, numb and puffy, and he can’t tell. 

“It’s okay,” Ben tells him. He’s sitting on his heels in front of Klaus, both hands hovering over his shoulders. Moths fly right through him like he isn’t there. But he is there. Klaus can see him. “It’s okay, Klaus.” 

Klaus swallows thickly. He closes his eyes. The air around him does not want to be breathed in. 

“Vanya,” he says, and he doesn’t recognize his own voice, overcrowded and broken by the whispers trying to suffocate him. “Vanya, you have to stop. Dad’s—he killed Ben and—and—we need to—what if he finds out we know, we know about our powers? He’s going to kill us. Dad, he—”

A hand grips his shoulder. But Vanya is already holding him and Ben can’t touch him.

Klaus gasps. The back of his throat tastes like sick. 

The disembodied whispers of the dead hang on him like thick smog, heavy and damp on his skin, it cripples and blackens his lungs inside. The ghosts sing for him to join their purgatory, abandoned factory buildings, air thick with dust and ghosts and voices, liminal spaces that no one else exists in but him, a cold, desolate universe alone with crowded spirits. He feels insecure in this fevered body, he’s not strapped in and falling out, too short for the ride and not long for the time. 

He’s not sure he’s making sense.

He’s going to die. 

The hand grips tighter. Klaus’s eyes are still closed. They move their other hand, places their palm flat against his chest. His heart beats against it, too fast and terrified like him. 

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Diego says. 

Diego. Dad’s son, his brother. Follows after One and argues, doesn’t answer to Two but he wears a Domino mask and follows Dad’s orders and fights. 

The hospital, where Dad has control and Klaus doesn’t. Where they strap him down and inject him. Where they feed him poison and blackmail, and cold, forced submission and hypnosis mind control. Where they lie to him, hide him. Where they look straight through the ghosts, and tell him _no one’s there._

“No,” he begs, and shudders, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. He can’t open his eyes. His eyes are on another plane of existence, a world overlapping this one, and he doesn’t want to see that place of death. He’s not ready to listen to the voices again.“No, no, I can’t go to the hospital, they’re going to kill me. The doctors are fake, Vanya, don’t let him, Diego is going to kill me, just like Dad killed Ben, I swear—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Vanya says. She sounds reassuring. He wonders if Dad has strings in her brain, controls her like a puppet. He wonders if her voice is hers. 

Maybe she’s a robot like Mom. 

God, his chest hurts. 

“Klaus, I’m not going to hurt you,” Diego says. His thumb strokes his shoulder, dragging his sandpaper clothes against his tired skin. It hurts. “Dad didn’t send me. He’s not here. Just let me help.”

Klaus shakes his head. He can’t breathe. He feels dizzy. “No.”

“I trust him,” Ben says. “Please, Klaus. We have a code—ask him—ask him what’s East of Eden? It’s a book, but I’m asking about the direction. It’s a joke from when we were kids. The answer is Salinas Valley. The mountains.”

Klaus coughs. His mouth is so dry, tastebuds turned to Sahara dust but he chokes something out wet. A valley sounds kind of nice right now. This hallway is too crowded and artificial. He can’t breath.

“What’s East of Eden?” Ben repeats, urging. 

Klaus asks for him, because no one else can hear him but Klaus. Because of his powers. Dad lied to him. 

“The book?” Vanya asks. Her voice is soft like Mom’s. She’s not a robot. Klaus would notice if she was a robot. 

“No, what’s East of it,” Ben says.

Klaus parrots him. The words taste fuzzy on his tongue. 

“What, the mountains?” Diego asks. “Klaus, what—?”

“He’s safe,” Ben promises. “If he knew Dad did anything like this, he wouldn’t be on his side. Tell him.”

_Don’t_ , they say. _Don’t_. 

Diego throws knives. He’s going to put one in Klaus’s back. 

He finally opens his eyes, sees Ben still sitting in front of him, hovering. He and Vanya both look worried. Vanya has tears running down her face, and he feels awful. He should have come here earlier, before the bugs started to follow him, before he took those pills. 

“I don’t feel good,” he says. He thinks he said it earlier, but he can’t remember. It doesn’t sound right. He took those pills to feel better. Dad always hated the drugs he didn’t provide. 

It is so hot. Or maybe it’s cold in here, and he’s hot. Maybe that’s why the bugs crawl to him, drag across his skin, shudder and scratch at him. Maybe they’re seeking body heat. The entire hallway is covered; where are they coming from? He needs to leave.   
  
They need to leave. Vanya isn’t safe here. Neither is Klaus and Ben—Ben is already dead. And Diego—Diego should leave, too. Like Alison, move far away and never come back. He tries to move, brushes the ants at his feet away to stand, but not on them. 

“No, don’t get up,” Vanya tells him. Her hand is still on his back. He can feel the cold through his shirt. 

It’s so hot in here. He doesn’t feel good.

He hears Vanya and Ben yelling his name. They say it at the same time. He wonders what’s wrong. 

“Jesus Christ,” Diego says. “Get him on his side.”

His head is pulsing. But the noise around him is fading, hollowing out to a high pitched ringing. Klaus closes his eyes.   
  
When he opens them again, it’s quiet, and everything is grey. The bugs are mostly gone, but he’s in a forest, now. Alone. No ghostly voices. No Ben, or Vanya or Diego. 

He hopes Vanya is safe. He hopes Ben was right about their brother. 

Klaus digs his feet into the earth, damp and rough with broken twigs and tiny roots. He stands up and stretches, glancing around. It’s so much cooler here. It’s quiet. Peaceful.   
  
A bell rings, high and cheerful, like summer, and Klaus turns to see a girl on a bike riding towards him. She’s the only person around, so he waves and she stops for him. 

“Almost didn’t see you,” she says. “So pale and all. You blend right in around here. Do they not have sun down there?”

Klaus blinks. “Down there? Where am I?”

“Where do you think?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at him. 

Klaus looks around again. He doesn’t feel like he should be here. Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s sedated in the hospital and he’s dreaming this.

Or maybe he’s just dead.

“I’m agnostic,” he says. “And—I’m not sure.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You can’t stay here.”

He’s not sure that he wants to. But it is nice—it’s not so hot, or loud, and he’s not crawling with insects. “Why not?”

“To be blunt: I don’t really like you all that much.”

“Oh,” Klaus says. He thinks back to the hallway, and Vanya’s tears and Ben’s worried eyes. Even Diego seemed intense. And everything he’s done wrong—he keeps messing up. He doesn’t know what reality even is, anymore. Everything seems so...something. Too much of something. “Yeah. Me neither.”

The girls sighs at him. She waves. Klaus waves back. His _Goodbye_ hand. 

Klaus blinks, and then he’s lying on the ground again, burning. Everything hurts. Everything is so loud. He gasps. 

Vanya screams.

**Author's Note:**

> klaus will be okay, diego has a wee-wee car that goes fast  
> also pretty sure their neighbors hate them tonight  
> title is from Howl by Allen Ginsberg! you thought i forgot, huh? nah fam
> 
> anyways...ben is as pretentious of a reader as I am. But at least ive read east of eden. Haven’t read Frankenstein yet. 
> 
> ben and klaus: besties, friends 4ever, heart eyes emoji  
> diego and vanya: almost. acquaintances. they’re getting there. soon-to-be besties
> 
> i just can’t help myself, i love diego so much. so now he’s getting adopted into Klaus and Vanya’s friend group. yeah no going back now. 
> 
> Xoxo love you and goodnight!!!


End file.
